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“They came to our house. We refused to open the door so they broke in though the window.”

That’s how Damaris Blessing Tiswan, a finance student at Kaduna Polytechnic, began describing her ordeal of being kidnapped with her four siblings at midnight.

On the eve of presidential and National Assembly elections in Nigeria, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Prof Dr Jerry Pillay, on behalf of the global fellowship, extended prayers for an enduring peace for the people and nation of Nigeria.

At an online roundtable hosted by the All Africa Conference of Churches, male “champions for gender justice” shared their ideas and insights during their yearlong service as men who are helping to prevent gender-based violence.

World Council of Churches (WCC) acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca expressed the revulsion of the global fellowship of churches at the murder of Deborah Yakubu, a second-year college student beaten to death and burnt by a group of her fellow students in Sokoto, northern Nigeria.

World Council of Churches (WCC) acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca expressed deep concern about the worsening security situation in Nigeria, and the impact on the people and churches of the country.

In Nigeria’s northwest state of Kaduna, Christians are bearing the brunt of insecurity and violence, as bandits attack homes, villages and churches, killing Christians and kidnapping others for ransom.

At the centre of the communal violence is religious persecution, territorial ambition and ethnic cleansing in the region where communities have settled along religious lines, according to Rev. John Joseph Hayab, the country director for the Global Peace Foundation, Nigeria.

 

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy programme, in partnership with the Christian Council of Nigeria (CCN), hosted a PEPFAR-UNAIDS consultation on HIV treatment adherence in Lagos, Nigeria, in April.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy programme will hold workshops in April 2021 on HIV treatment adherence in Ivory Coast and Nigeria.

The Institute for Church and Society in Nigeria is raising awareness of the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water globally by participating in the World Council of Churches' Seven Weeks for Water Lenten campaign.

A three-day workshop facilitated in Jos, Nigeria by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in partnership with the Christian Council of Nigeria trained religious leaders, humanitarian workers and government officials on how to provide support for migrants who are vulnerable to HIV.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) will co-host a workshop on “Addressing Risks and Vulnerability to HIV for Migrants, Refugees and Internally Displaced People” from 1-5 March in Jos, Nigeria.

Damaris, a Nigerian woman, described her experience of 2020: “We’ve gone through hell.”

Damaris and her sisters were kidnapped in March 2020 and threatened with death as their kidnappers demanded money. Her father had to sell everything and beg on the streets to meet their demands. “We are just a common people in Nigeria,” she said. “We don’t know what we did.”

A webinar hosted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) on 26 November will explore “Conflict Zones and Covid-19: A call to compassion.” Speakers from Cameroon, Nigeria, South Sudan, Lebanon, Belarus and Colombia will offer their insights on how conflict exacerbates the conditions for contracting and treating COVID-19 among civilians caught in the crossfire, especially women.

The World Council of Churches interim general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca condemned the violence in Nigeria in a statement on 22 October and offered condolences to those who have lost loved ones.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with an estimated 210 million people, has a distinctive mix of people with almost equal numbers of Christians and Muslims, most of whom get on, living their normal lives intertwined in peace, except when terror strikes.

Africa is of huge concern around the novel coronavirus pandemic for the World Health Organization (WHO), but the continent’s churches have been preparing for the silent and lethal virus for some time.

“The church has lots of roles in removing barriers that prevent persons with disabilities from living a fulfilled life. All are created in the image of God and have equal rights. Sexual and reproductive health is one such right that should not be denied to any woman,” said Rev. Evans Onyemara, general secretary of the Christian Council of Nigeria during a training on empowering women with disabilities on sexual and reproductive health care held at Umuahia, Nigeria from 9-11 March.

Two workshops in Nigeria and Tanzania organized by local church councils in collaboration with the World Council of Churches (WCC), All Africa Conference of Churches, and UNICEF consolidated the partnership on ending sexual violence against children.